vancouver summary 1-5

Entry 1 – Arrival in Vancouver

So, dear readers, I think it's time to tell you about my experiences here in Vancouver so far. Normally this would be a Galliard's task – but will have to do.
After leaving Toronto I arrived here just a few days ago. Vancouver had long been renowned as the setting of an ominous experiment in the form of a non-aggression pact between the Garou and the leeches, which the leeches of course broke. In direct consequence of this, the only Glass Walkers caern in the entire area was completely destroyed. Who'd have thought that the leeches would go so far as to demolish an entire skyscraper! The Glass Walkers were relatively lucky, we don't usually live in our caerns, but our kinfolk do. Damn the leeches – and if anyone ever tells you again „The Nossies are alright!“ then please shoot him in his foot with best regards from me. Thanks.

So I wasn't left with any choice but to join one of the other septs. I was sent to the Fianna caern outside town – oh, thanks a lot. Our dear Fianna, who think it's a great service to Gaia to dance around campfires drunk but use to consider the simple use of Google a treason against the Garou Nation. Who also treat their Metis like scum, but that's an entirely different topic. Leader of that sept is one certain Athro named „Sings-with-Fae“, a fact that speaks volumes. There is only one real Elder in the Vancouver area, and I'm not yet sure if I really want to meet him. Since yesterday was the day of the big Samhain celebration of the Fianna I was supposed to show up and introduce myself. I invested in a nice present, a new iPod with better headphones and some little other upgrades. In the evening I set off. The caern in all of its antediluvian beauty is located in a museum village, and many of the attendees didn't find it too silly to strut around in LARP clothing. I felt like I was on a renaissance fair and was just waiting for someone to try and sell me cheap silver jewelery any second. As expected, Sings-with-Fae didn't find much use for my present. At that occasion I also met Brianna the Fianna (actual name). I guess that next to her even Mrs Schiffer would feel a little bit ugly.

To my big surprise they claimed to have WLAN in the caern (*gasp* - a grain of the 21st century!), but the person I should get the key from, one certain Crackjack, was nowhere to be found. On my search I encountered several more interesting figures: Fin Finnegan, Fianna Kinfolk, in a huge black Porsche and the company of a young, quite intimidated Qualmi named Carol (afair), my car mechanic Charlie who smelt of stimulating herbs as always and, no bullshit, turned out to be a Nuwisha (which kinda explains the Roadrunner on his car) and Liam, a Gurahl. Savor this for a moment. The explanation of this whole Disneyland was a new pact, this time however made between the various Fera. Hearing this was very comforting, but I don't fully trust the peace. There has been too much bad blood for me to imagine that Gaia's other children will just be able to ignore it. Long story short, I didn't find the WLAN guy, but there's always a way for a Ragabash and aspirant for the Random Interrupts. Also, it's better if one of us finds any vulnerabilities than one of 'the others'. Each of the ca. 60 guests introduced herself in turn. So did I, and I asked to be accepted into the sept. At that occasion Crackjack finally appeared, too – my god. If THAT was what formed the Fianna's image of computer-competent people, then it's no wonder that one isn't taken seriously here!

The Fianna had dished up quite well, and the guests had also contributed one or the other stimulating substance. Brianna seemed not only to be blessed with gorgeous looks but also with a really good voice. She began to intone medieval measures. After a while the talk came to forming packs, and we newbies would have to earn our respect. The distribution of the roles was quite confused, luckily we were able to ignore that later on with impunity. I declared myself Beta, Brianna became the temporary Alpha, Charlie lost a game of rock-scissors-paper and became Omega. Our task was to get a dead person to tell the story of her life in her own words. After two minutes I had the first results on Google, but the offer didn't kindle much enthusiasm. I think that with this pack, I'll have to expect a lot like this. But maybe I can exert a bit of good influence on them, let's see. The anachronistically inclined majority of the pack however preferred to intone medieval measures in a graveyard in the dead of night to coax a soul out. A raven spirit answered who said that he'd teach us the proper Rite of Summoning if we were able to build him a nest before he had finished his own medieval measure. And already he started to belt it out. Honestly, any more medieval measures in the next days and I'll go berserk. Regardless, we had enough umbral moss, lynx wool and twigs to solve his task just fine. Back in the caern we summoned a very important Garou ancestor – if someone remembers the name I'll insert it here immediately – whose family is even mentioned in the Silver Record. This earned Brianna the name „Who-calls-legends“. When Sings-with-Fae painted a sign with blood on our foreheads we were considered accepted. So this is my new substitute for a family. I'm really curious where this will lead. I just hope it'll have a good deal less to do with medieval music and swaying left and right.



Entry 2 – Encounter with the Children of Gaia

Invited the pack over, since I was afraid that I had overdone it with my aloofness the last time. Wanted to cook something Chinese, rate of acceptance with the pack was ca. 50%. Damn. Also don't know if they believe me that cockroaches in the apartment are part of worshiping our totem among the GWs. A certain Bob was also invited quite unexpectedly, another Gurahl who's part of Fin's pack. I wasn't really comfortable with that, but I didn't want to be a party pooper. Bob and Liam were speculating whether they were the only two Gurahl in the world. Maybe we've been a bit to enthusiastic about the „return“ of the bears. Apart from that I didn't really warm up to Bob, he seemed more interested in pumping us for information about our pack and securing a good position for himself than in anything else. Even in my apartment Brianna started her medieval tootling – I almost think I might get used to that. Eventually this has something to do with her perfect singing voice. A colleague gave us hints for attractions around Vancouver, and a short time later we set off towards Stanley Park. Supposed to be a large caern, and indeed the site is huge. At that occasion I could also try the famous Vancouver Sky Train. On our way we met a group of Children of Gaia who worked for an environment protection association and collected signatures against the deforestation of the north slopes, complete with a cute Lupus with lots of public appeal. On the other hand they planned a raid on the fleet of the forest industry in charge. Non-violent, of course. That was supposed to make the ensuing protest in the forest a bit easier. As the dutiful shapeshifters that we were, we signed up as well.

Entry 3 – Sabotage of the deforestation plan

Slept halfways through the day. This is how it happened: After we had given our word and our signature to Nelsen Chang of the Children of Gaia, the weather worsened massively. It began to drizzle in that special wet and cold way that finds every tiny gap in one's clothing. As a consequence our little group already dissolved. Charlie and Bob broke away to work in the garage, Brianna and Liam turned around too so finally only Carol and I were left for our little walk in the park. In short, we gave up on that plan too. Instead we found a neat little café and warmed ourselves on our beverages. Carol seems to be a nice person but I just can't find a way to talk to her. She answers everything I say with a riddle while she looks at me in that friendly expressionless way that makes me feel dumber than I actually am. But I don't think she does that intentionally. To be honest, I was almost a bit relieved when work called me again. It was slowly growing dark, just according for this time of the year.

At home I picked up my efforts to get into the Interrupts again. After that I looked up our site of action for tonight on Google Earth, but of course tons of green stuff blocked the sight. Suddenly Bob called. He wanted to visit me. Now. The bell rang. Slightly irritated with such bad manners I let him in anyway, plus the strange person that he hadn't announced to me and now introduced as „Vic“. The two sat down in my living room and Bob began a huge rant that only confused me further. I was half expecting him to say that Vic would live with me now, but fortunately he didn't. Turned out, they knew each other for a long time when both had been living in Europe and he had been protecting her from vampires. Now she had emerged as a Corax. He seemed extremely dissatisfied with that. The true reason why both had come however was to borrow black, warm clothes. Vic ate my Chinese food without complaint which made her likable in my eyes. There were enough dark clothes for all of us, and we let the evening pass until it was time to go to the meeting point.

Shortly before midnight we gathered near the parking lot and had a quick briefing. Those who had come consisted of Chang as well as another young Children of Gaia Ragabash called Moonflower and a rather generic-looking young Garou named Frank, also Charlie, Bob, Vic and me and finally Carol who was unusually well camouflaged. Bob and Vic were constantly joking and giggling which was sort of cute but definitely out of place here. The peacemakers however hadn't brought walkie-talkies. The look they gave me when I mentioned that was almost shocked – oh sorry, I forgot, that would almost be like deliberately stuffing a spider down your ear. Apart from that the rules were clear: No Crinos, no hurting people, no spilling gasoline and oil on the earth while disabling as many vehicles as possible. We were to find several trucks, three bulldozers and two Harvesters (automatic wood harvesting machines). We Ragabash activated Blur of the Milky Eye, everyone grabbed canisters and tools, then we reached the barbed-wire crowned outer wall of the lot. Frank took care of the barbed wire. We all ninja'd on to the other side, took a careful look around – but there was nothing. Somebody had moved the entire fleet away from the parking lot. That left us to turn back dumbfoundedly and helplessly. But soon this riddle solved itself in the form of a panicked phone call from Fin.

Seemingly, the Fianna's kinfolk were housed near the piece of forest that was to be cleared. And that was where the whole convoy was headed – a total of four hours before the first protesters would arrive. We hurried to get ahead of them and actually caught up. Since the heavy machines couldn't use the small forest paths we arrived at the scene before them. Some of the tree-huggers had actually been camping in the forest. We also saw Fin who was just tieing a young man with severe choking fits to a tree. This didn't seem to upset anyone except Carol, but we had other problems. Chang told us to pick up some signs („Wood is human too! It still lives!“ - „Think about Nature, without it you too will wither and die!“) and stand in their path. ...And that was it? Even a Glass Walker like me thought this was a bit pathetic. But he was right, shifting in front of all these ordinary humans would be a really stupid idea. We'd have to manage with something different. Because I lacked a better idea I obeyed, even if it didn't sit well with me. Bob obviously didn't think so, shifted into his (fair) Glabro form and ran towards the clearing convoy. Minutes passed, then loud honking came from the direction of the road. Seemingly suspecting bad things Carol hurried towards the scene of events, too. I followed as well.

When we arrived we saw the foremost truck of the building convoy maneuvering diagonally across the road. Behind the wheel Bob, with a moronic smile on his face. He later explained he had boarded the rolling vehicle, forced the driver out, taken over the truck, broken of the key in the lock and laid waste to the cabin. When he got out however the whole angry forest workforce had tried to wrestle him to the ground. In his muscled Glabro however he could resist their efforts even without using violence. For the time being, that is, the mob kept beating down on him. Carol didn't hesitate a second to come to his aid in gross overestimation of her own humble strength. I had no illusions if I could change the situation by throwing myself into the fray as well. No, I thought about creating a distraction. As a Glass Walker I have the possibility to control most simple technology. I thought about taming the spirits in the horn of one of the trucks. Then the thought came to me that if I could sound a horn maybe I could push other buttons as well. A Harvester is a solid piece of high tech, but strictly spoken it's only an interplay of simple mechanisms. As for example the button for the sawing rack. Fortunately the vessels were empty because the conductors were busy beating up Bob in the front. When the backmost Harvester began sawing up the rear of the one in front they quickly  turned their attention away from my two friends. As a practical side-effect the action ruined the entire sawing device so that I tried the same thing again with the second harvesting machine. Only that Bob didn't run away even when I prompted him to and even when Carol tugged on him. But finally he gave in.

The asthmatic young man seemed to be better when we came back to the others. Instead, Chang was now dangerously close to a nervous breakdown, especially since he had only fragmentary knowledge of what we had done. After a short explanation however he seemed to shift to a mixture of joy and panic. We urged the brave protesters to scatter into all directions since the police were already on their way. I'm slowly beginning to think that Carol gets travel-sick easily, she behaved strangely. More strangely than usual, I mean. Around 2 am the shifters among us met in Stanley Park to evaluate the action. The guy who coughed a lot was there too and turned out to be Marius of the Fianna, originally from Germany. The Children of Gaia would have lots of work to do now, for example to think up alibis so that Chang's conservationists wouldn't get under suspicion. On the other hand this might be the chance to initiate a long and tiresome examination of the safety of automatic wood harvesting machines. After all, two of them had „taken on a life of their own“. In any case some of us would have to offer themselves and go back to the forest in two hours and pretend to know of nothing when the actual protest started.
Nobody volunteered except me. Gee, thanks.

It was surprising how many people showed up. I was impressed. As expected the police searched in vain for connections between us and the nightly happenings. Bob will have to be careful to whom he appears in Glabro in the future. It also remains to be seen if the forest industry won't protect themselves a bit better in the future. When all of us had been sufficiently glad that nobody would come to hurt the trees today I went to bed asap.


Entry 4 – Umbral videogames?

I'm writing this entry on the road and will up it as soon as we're back. This morning a slightly silly ancestor spirit of the Silver Fangs contacted me via an instant messenger. Later research in GWnet told me he had been in contact with our tribe before. As a Metis he'd never been particularly famous during his lifetime. His real career started with his death. Now he called himself an online guardian and was obviously in touch with a couple of new cyber realms that had been created out of the collective consciousness of fantasy computer games. He asked me and the pack to explore one of these realms and see if we could bring legendary artifacts into the Tellurian and put them to use. I think this is an exceptional thing. So there are new Weaver-based realms emerging in the Umbra. This is bound to shock the old-established Garou – but what if we can really use these realms to our benefit? We already succeeded with the Cyber Realm. And if we can discover medieval-styled magical objects here AND use them in the Tellurian it would be an advantage that all skepticism aside only a fool would give away. Due to the form of these objects, the other tribes might not be so disinclined. I'm full of anticipation, even if the notion to hack and slay myself through dungeons filled with monsters doesn't make me feel too comfortable. Secondarily, one of these objects should serve as a thankyou for the Fianna who, one must admit so much, have cared much for my tribe since we lost our caern.

First however Brianna had invited the whole mob over to her place for barbecue and it was a nice meeting indeed. I squabbled a bit with Marius but I think I like him. He has pretty sharp wits and it's nice training for the brain to try and keep up with that. And it makes me feel like I'm no longer the most arrogant person in the group. No really, that's still a problem for me. I have the feeling that there is an invisible barrier between me and the others. I notice it every time when I recapitulate my actions. We live in the same city in the same time and still in different dimensions. Maybe it's just a matter of time until we find a common wavelength, at least that's what I hope. Until then I'll keep fulfilling the stereotype of the quite cool, aloof Glass Walker. I like about Liam that he's not afraid to stand up for his opinions which are quite similar to mine in some aspects. Later that day he got his ass kicked for that, but more about that below. I'm keeping a mental distance to Fin. To me that guy seems rather suspicious. And Brianna is a completely likable person, but see above what I said about dimensions. I get along fine with Charlie so far but I don't forget for one second that he's a Nuwisha. I expect that the worse is yet to come.

Said ancestor spirit „Game Brain“ resided in a library in the Near Umbra. A moon bridge leading there could be opened from the caern. This didn't happen however without Fin opening his LARP treasure chest for us and trying really hard to convince us women of chainmail bikinis. We were also taken to another small moot. Finally we found some decent armor among all the fantasy stuff. If we are going into a realm where we are subject to the rules of a medieval adventure game it can't hurt to care for our protection a bit. What we didn't have were weapons, all of them except some bows consisted of foam plastic. Liam chose to trust in bullet-proof vests and firearms instead and thus rose several steps on my ladder of sympathy. He then even borrowed me a shooter. After that we assembled in a small circle. I should relate what I had in mind for „my team“. Uhm, what? Alright. We bluffed our way through, except for Liam who made fun of Sings-with-Fae a bit too openly. Hereupon he received a long sermon about how he was to respect those higher in rank. Inwardly I winced at that a bit, after all I'm used to a rather lax tone when talking to the bosses as well. Of course Fin had to dress him down even further but I snapped at him for that. I almost got a smack on the head from Sings-with-Fae myself when I told Charlie quietly – or so I thought – that we could simply ignore our assigned roles as soon as we were gone but I could talk myself out of it just in time. Was really glad when we were finally standing on the moon bridge, though.

After about half an hour we arrived at a cozy little library somewhere in the void, complete with an antiquated computer and Game Brain. The poor boy was really badly off with his deformity. Even in homid his head was almost that of a lupus, only hairless, but with a little beard for compensation. A bit like the badly done werewolves in b-movies. Beforehand we had decided on the subrealm corresponding to the game „Diablo“, especially since Marius seemed to be a complete Diablo geek.   I presumed to forbid the pack to choose Wyrm-corrupted classes that for example have the ability to drain energy from corpses or do some other „badass“ rubbish that the kids think is awesome. Everyone picked a class, huntress in my case, had their thumbs scanned in and got new weapons and equipment. Actually that was really funny and fascinating if there hadn't been the quite realistic prospect to kick the bucket and no, no extra lives and no godmode.
Next time I'll write what awaited us in the actual realm.



Entry 5 – Hack'n'Slay... your idea of fun?

...and woosh we found ourselves in the middle of a peaceful little village where we split up. This realm followed his very own rules... like for example that many objects were furnished with self-updating notes. Or no matter how much money one owned, it always took the form of one single big coin whose stamping simply changed. As if he had been given analeptics Marius stormed off to buy spellbooks from a witch. After reading them once they disappeared. Then he dragged us into a haunted cathedral in search for undead which he could magic to dust. There he kept yelling the name of his special attack like in an anime movie. Again and again. And even oftener. The undead here weren't particularly solidly built and when they perished they dropped money and items. What followed was unrestrained carnage and further visits at the witch's until we were finally found by a hero named Sir Bummer (or so...). He didn't have much ability but he'd allow us to join him on his noble quest. Marius advised us to do so, because this guy would later ram a cursed gemstone into his head with his own hands. This would unlock the really good loots for us. Mean, but since nobody had much sympathy for the guy and we kept making him silly that was alright. Ensued further carnage in neverending caves, dungeons, catacombs, tunnels, corridors, pits... you know what I mean. My apologies to the video game fans out there, but are you serious?! Millions of people play this bullshit with a fervor that is able to create an umbral realm of its own?! I took comfort in the thought that the final battle on the day of the Apocalypse would be even worse and allowed myself to be dragged along in the bloodbath-induced idiocy. Well, this realm had its moments after all, I admit that. Maybe I even felt excitement at one point or the other. After we had slaughtered our way through hordes of monsters for so long that I even felt I was shooting arrows while I was completely motionless we finally arrived at the gates of Hell. The creatures here were slightly nastier, but soon enough we stood before the throne room of Satan Diablo Lucifer the Devil. We gave Sir Bummer a bit of equipment and our best wishes on the way and pissed off back to the village. Oh, how nice and peaceful. We have a unique bow as a souvenir for the Fianna. I'm curious if this will work. The implications would be gigantic.